Gardening as a Family Tradition

I grew up with a garden.

Every year my mom planted green beans, onions, carrots, sweet corn, tomatoes and several other vegetables. And I hated it. I always took the produce for granted and I hated helping weed it. I hated it so much that my mom used pulling weeds as discipline for my sister and I when we had been fighting. It was, generally, pretty effective discipline.

Then I grew up, graduated high school and left home for college. I was a typical, poor college student surviving on ramen noodles and frozen pizza. Suddenly the fresh produce that my mom labored over every summer became much more appealing.

When I graduated college and moved back to my hometown I took more time to appreciate my mom’s garden and volunteered to help her can green beans, tomato juice and freeze sweet corn. I enjoyed the time I got to spend with my mom and once HandyMan and I got married and started our own garden I really began to value the knowledge that my mom had shared with me.

This summer HandyMan and I, somehow, managed to have a garden. HandyMan took Blue out to the garden to pull weeds and plant vegetables while I was on bedrest. After Daisy was born and was in the NICU, the garden began to struggle. The dry, hot summer scorched our green beans and ruined our first planting of sweet corn, however we were still able to put up 36 quarts of tomato juice and can a few green beans. Every year when HandyMan and I get out our canning supplies we call my mom for a reminder on what to do, and she patiently reminds us of the steps we forgot over the previous year.

Our sweet corn, while delicious, didn’t amount to enough to freeze. Thankfully, my grandpa planted more than enough and one Saturday my entire family (my sister’s family, my brother & his wife, my youngest brother, HandyMan and I +6 small children) went to my mom’s house and spent an entire Saturday freezing sweet corn. We started early in the morning and worked all day freezing 200 bags of corn. It was a long day full of hard work, but it was so much fun. We enjoyed spending time together, talking and teasing HandyMan for picking SO MUCH corn, but really we enjoyed the day. And now we’re going to be able to enjoy sweet corn all winter.

As HandyMan and I raise our children, I hope they don’t hate the garden like I did as a child, but instead enjoy it and value having fresh, healthy foods to eat throughout the year. And I hope someday, when Blue and Daisy are grown that they will come home, with their families, to spend a day “putting up” food for the winter.

Let’s talk about food

Food is fundamental. It should not elicit feelings of guilt or elitism. Food is sustenance. As a mom, a farm girl, a cook – and a consumer – I believe we should applaud our food origins, whether it’s Blog Action Day 2011, Food Day or any day. I made this video to celebrate the many faces in our food system – and while it’s not perfect, let’s embrace the progress we’ve made.

Food does not need to be political – nor should it be about posturing. Especially in a time where one in five are hungry – in the U.S. alone. The problem worsens internationally. If you’ve ever looked into the eyes of a hungry child, you’ll gain a new perspective on what’s important with food. I know because of my travels to developing countries such as Egypt and South Africa, as well as the Ukraine and Baltics shortly after communism fell.

People deserve for agriculture to be at its very best. People also deserve choice in the food system, which means we shouldn’t be wasting Food Day or Blog Action Day posturing about our opinions on  organic or conventional, small or large, animal or grain. Instead, let’s honor the incredible diversity of our food system – at many levels, not just on the farm.

Celebrate Food Day and Blog Action Day by reaching a hand across the food plate. If you don’t know a farmer to reach a hand to, please check this list – there are many who will be glad to chat with you. And if you are a farmer, take a look around the Blog Action Day activities for some hands to reach out to.  Let’s talk about it – and reach across the plate so we can all improve!

Other blogs you might want to check out for #BAD11 (Blog Action Day):

Decide. Stress. Pray. Farm

Passion for their work is a little different for farmers than for the average career-minded person. For instance, most farmers live on their farm. How many people actually live where they work? How many people have to worry that if their business fails or falls on hard times they might lose the house/property/business that has, often, been in the family for several generations? In addition to that, how many people operate a business where SO MANY factors are completely out of their control?  It can be very stressful to say the least!

This year has been an interesting year for my family’s farm. We had an unusually wet spring and worried that we weren’t going to be able to get our corn in the ground in time. Beans seemed to go in a little more smoothly, but due to the wet conditions, it was almost impossible to get fertilizer on the crops. Then suddenly the rain stopped and the thermostat was cranked up a few degrees. It didn’t rain here in central Indiana for weeks and didn’t start raining again until right before (and during) harvest. I know that other parts of the country have also experienced crazy weather, severe floods and drought – there’s nothing anyone can do to control the weather. Farmers just have to make the best of what they’re given and trust that they made the right decisions with the factors that were under their control.

Then harvest rolls around and suddenly its time to see how the decisions they made – type of seed, fertilizer, herbicide, insecticide, etc – panned out. How did those choices, combined with the weather effect the yield? Sometimes things work out and the right decisions combined with the right weather result in high yields. Other times it doesn’t work out as well.

HandyMan and his dad spent a lot of time over the summer talking about the weather and how it was affecting the corn and soybeans. HandyMan’s dad commented several times that guys who got their beans in just a week or so before he did were getting a better crop. Then rain would be forecast and HandyMan would be glued to the radar, praying for some rain only to be disappointed when the rain seemed to break up and go around us or dissipate right before it got to us (almost every time). HandyMan would come home from work, go out into the field and come back with a few ears of corn from various sections of the field to see how the ears were filling out and then to see how they were drying up. Several times I’ve had to ask HandyMan to relax and stop stressing, to remind him that we can’t control the weather. All we can do is make the best decisions, based on the information available to us, and then pray that it all works out in the end.

So far, this year isn’t looking as bad as HandyMan and his dad worried that it would. I don’t know exactly what the per acre yield average was for beans, only that it was better than what HandyMan’s dad had thought it would be. And so far corn has turned out the same – better than expected but not as good as last year.

And you know what, I think we’ll take it!

Popcorn is golden to Chicago kids on a combine

“I started this site to promote the virtues of modern agriculture and feature the daily operations of our farm.  Please read, discuss, and enjoy!” This is the last line of my blog’s About page. As a farmer, I know I have the responsibility to talk about my farm.

Earlier this month, I had the privilege of doing both those things up close and personal with a great group of home school kids who came all the way down from the northern suburbs of Chicago.  The kids are participating in the FIRST LEGO League Food Factor Challenge, and they have chosen to study microwave popcorn.  The goal is for them to find a problem in the food production chain and find a way to solve that problem.  I had not heard of this program until the group brought it to my attention via a comment on this site.

Part of that comment reads: This year’s challenge is called Food Factor, and our team has chosen to study microwave popcorn in the pre-packaged bags. We are just beginning our research and were hoping to learn all we can about popcorn. This is where you come in. Would you consider allowing our team, with adult supervision, to visit your farm?

The question asked most frequently by ag people like me on social media is “How can I reach beyond the choir?”  One of our biggest concerns is that we spend too much time talking to people already in the industry and not including the consumer in that dialogue.  With that in mind, it’s hard not to jump at the opportunity to bring these young people out so they can see a real farm in operation.

Since the group consisted completely of home schoolers, their schedule was flexible and they were able to come out to the farm on a day when we were actually harvesting popcorn.  That is easier said than done because the company we grow for needs the grain delivered at a certain moisture content, leaving a small window of opportunity for a group to come out and see the entire process.

The timing worked out great and the weather could not have been better the day they came out to the farm.  The kids arrived just before noon, and to show their appreciation they brought us lunch at the farm.  After lunch we started on their project – this wasn’t just a farm tour.  We spent quite a bit of time in the office answering questions.  These kids were very well prepared and had lots of great questions for us.

Next we took a trip through the shop and equipment shed before going out into the field to look at the popcorn.  This is probably the part I was most excited about because these kids got to see popcorn still on the ear, standing in the field.  What better proof that food doesn’t come from the grocery store? While in the field there were more questions to be answered, and we even found a couple of ears with insect damage which would be relevant to the objective of their project.  One thing to watch for with popcorn is damage to the outer part of the kernel either by insect or mechanical functions.  If popcorn is damaged, it won’t pop!

After inspecting the field we walked over to the combine and covered the basics of how it removes the grain from the plant and distributes the residue in the field.  And, as a kind of grand finale, we gave all of the kids and adults a ride in the combine so they could see that whole process in action.

I had a hunch they would enjoy the combine, but I had no idea how excited they would actually be.  When you do this kind of thing everyday, although it is fun and I love doing it, being around it your whole life makes the workings of a farm a pretty normal thing.  Not so for these kids. In case you don’t know a combine has a window in the back of the cab that allows you to see what it going on in the grain tank as it fills with grain.  Everyone who got their first combine ride that day was at first fixated with the front of the machine pulling in the stalks and knocking the ears off.  They didn’t even realize that window was back there unless they turned around or I pointed it out to them.

The term I’ve been using to describe the reaction of all the kids when they saw entire plants in front of them seconds later somehow turned into clean grain in a window right behind them was that “their brains exploded.” There were lots of shouts of words like cool and awesome, but the quote of they day had to be one kid who looked at the flowing grain and exclaimed, “It’s so golden!” They had been learning eagerly for a couple of hours about how the seeds get in the ground and how long the growing season is, and then in a matter of seconds that plant becomes a form of food they are familiar with. Overall it’s still a pretty neat process for me to see too, but seeing it for the first time was quite a sight for this great group.

Not only did they see popcorn in the field being harvested, on the way back to Chicago they had a tour of the Family Time popcorn facility in Valparaiso, Indiana.  In one day, these kids experience popcorn on the stalk in a field be harvested, trucked away, and then packaged.  What a great experience for them!

Brian is a 31 year old husband, father and 4th generation farmer from Northwest Indiana operating 2300 acres of corn, soybeans, popcorn, and wheat with his father and grandfather. He has a degree in Soil and Crop Management from Purdue University and worked off the farm before returning home.  In addition to family and farm, Brian is an automotive enthusiast and classic rock/metal fan. Find him on Twitter orFacebook, or check out The Farmer’s Life Blog